


lights will guide you home

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Resistance - Owen Sheers
Genre: Alternate History, F/M, Loss, Love, Missing Moments, WW2, War, oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6155139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and then they turn to begin the descent/or a series of oneshots and missing scenes from Resistance by Owen Sheers, in no particular order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. [run boy, run boy, run for your life]

**Author's Note:**

> This book is amazing, but it has such an ambiguous ending, so this is mainly just me trying to sort my thoughts out about it. Leap Days will be updated soon, I promise! :) Loyaulte xox

**I**

 

He waits for her for two days, huddling in the cellar for warmth and listening to the air rasp against the ruins above his head like sandpaper. The first night was the worst – the wind howled between the bricks and the trees – waiting and waiting for hours and hours on end. He’d arrived, chilled to the bone, lifting the rotting trapdoor and stumbling ten steps down into the musty quiet of the earthen room, pulling the blankets from his pack and curling up beneath them, trying to rub red feeling back into his chilled, white fingers. The seconds ticked by, and then the minutes drawing themselves out like lazy summer afternoons before the war, and then hours, stretching endlessly into the distance like abandoned railway tracks from which a train never arrives.

She has to come, though. She’d promised.

He thinks about her, to pass that first night. Her long, dark hair that tumbles relentlessly out of whichever tight braid she’s tried to force it into. Her weatherworn skin, her eyes like a cat’s – green and gold and wary. Her smile, the way it comes slowly, so slowly anyone else would think that it wouldn’t ever appear, and then suddenly all at once. The look on her face when he showed her the Mappa Mundi for the first time.

But of course, she doesn’t come that night, or the next morning when he’s half-heartedly nibbling at some of his rations and reciting poetry in his head to try and keep himself awake. When that doesn’t work anymore, he moves around the cellar, humming, trying to keep warm and to keep his mind off her, alone somewhere on the fringes of the valley, possibly hiding, possibly hurt. He toys with the idea of going to look for her but the miniature fighters in his head shoot it down before it ever really gets aloft. Sarah knows these hills far better than he does – it would be foolish, idiotic and possibly deadly to go out there on his own with insurgents and now his own army out looking for him.

He _maybejustalittle_ feels the shame of cowardice clench tight fingers around his heart, but rationality wins out and he sits back down again, stretching out his fingers and eventually sleep breaks over his head like a wave and gratefully, he drowns.

He’s woken by long hair tickling his face and small hands on his shoulders. He starts awake, hand going for the gun he thinks is at his belt, but her cold fingers catch his and he blinks her face into focus. They stay there for a moment, looking at each other, and then he huffs a laugh.

“I thought you were never going to come.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, sitting down beside him, close, closer than she’s ever been. He rubs her hands to try and warm them up. “I had to try.”

“Try what?”

“To see if I could find Tom.” It’s spoken without inflection, without emotion, her eyes pleading with him to understand. He nods, and some sort of weight shifts off her shoulders. She sighs. “I couldn’t find him and I thought…well, it doesn’t matter now.”

“It always matters,” he tells her, squeezing her hands gently. If he had any way to bring Ebbe back, he would. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry if I worried you, Albrecht.” It’s the first time she’s said his Christian name, properly, to his face. He draws in a breath. She flushes a little, but doesn’t look away. They’ve crossed a line now, they both know they have, and there’s no turning back. Not that there was before.

“Sarah,” he says, and touches her cheek. She’s not quite smiling, but he sees it in her eyes. “You don’t have to apologise.”

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you.”

Hours later, they get up and walk into the fading, dripping light, towards Ireland, towards freedom. Her hand brushes his wrist, and he takes it, lacing his fingers through hers. At the end of the ridge, she turns and looks down into the valley that was her home for so many years.

“Goodbye,” she whispers, the wind whipping her voice away into the blue, cloud-streaked sky.

Albrecht puts an arm around her waist and draws her close. “Not goodbye. See you soon,” he says. She smiles up at him, the rays of the setting sun catching on her nose, the curve of her jaw, her green green gold cat’s eyes, and then they turn to begin the descent.


	2. [and all the voices just burn holes]

In the weeks and months afterwards, he barely says a word, the letter curled up and tucked into his breast pocket. He almost wishes it were a red-hot glowing target, a sign to any sniper that might be out there in the snow-covered tundra to shoot him, to shoot him now and end this misery. He knows two things – one, that it’s been far too long since the raid and two, Alex is getting worried. Kicking ice from the ground, his mind drifts back to his parents, to Ebbe. To her black hair burning into a crisp and her pale, slightly sallow skin turning bright red from the heat of the flames and her sharp tongue screaming out for help. The ring on her finger melting into the soft flesh like lava. All the things that he should have said to her before his leave was up, all the things he should’ve written to tell her how much she meant to him.

“I knew I’d find you out here.” Alex’s voice breaks the stillness, and Albrecht stops pacing, turns to look at his subordinate, his friend, his sanity. “You need to sleep. It’s been six months.”

“Six months…” Albrecht echoes hollowly, the words echoing around the inside of his skull.

“I know it’s hard, I do, but you’re making yourself ill and the men _need_ a strong leader.”

“I know.”

“Please,” Alex says simply. “Please.”

Albrecht shakes his head to clear it. “Go back inside.”

Alex turns without another word, but Albrecht can feel the other man’s disappointment as he ducks back into the barn they’re all sheltering in. Alex is right. He knows this, it’s the truth that he’s been denying and burying deep inside himself ever since the British bombing raid that killed Ebbe and his parents.

Six months. It’s been long enough. He breathes in the freezing Russian air and breathes out steam onto his gloved fingertips, breathes out his regrets, breathes out his grief and tucks Ebbe’s laughing face into the secret space between his ribs that will always mourn the loss of the woman he was going to marry.

Then he turns, and follows Alex inside. Three weeks later, Stalin runs for the hills and his unit is sent to Britain.


End file.
